I found this a very useful and fascinating paper. The author has undertaken a task which is long overdue. The proliferation of various forms of narrative analysis means the terrain is in dire need of some clarification. I was particularly taken with the section on the psychological subject and the critique of Hollway and Jefferson's use of Kleinian theory, which I agree is a really scary example of what can happen if prior analytic frameworks are deductively imposed on accounts at the expense of a more interactional, situated, contingent reading. Psychoanalytic work is particularly pernicious in this regard as it does tend to claim some kind of self-satisfied privilege for itself. Therefore, I think this paper certainly deserves to be published, but I have one or two stylistic comments to make.
ñ This paper contains masses of ideas. This gives it complexity and richness, but it also makes the argument rather 'jerky' as if we are reading several papers joined together. The introduction is clear enough, but I did feel some signposting and summarising of 'the case so far' would help. For example, could there be some more subheadings between pages 3 and 10?
ñ The author makes considerable use of lists of various studies in this or that genre. I did not find this helpful. With the exception of studies with which I was already familiar, this added nothing to my understanding. Better, surely, to give one or two examples and give a brief summary of what the studies show and why they are an example of whatever it is they are supposed to be an example of. This is done very successfully in relation Hollway and Jefferson as I said above, but for example on pages 18 and 19 we are given numerous lists, which on their own, and in the absence of prior knowledge, are opaque.
ñ I think the conclusion is rather problematic as again, it is making some really important point, but it does so in a rather disjointed and over-summarised way. Unless one already knows what the author is talking about, one wouldn't really grasp what these different research themes are - some examples - like data extracts - may help, but perhaps would be out of place in the conclusion.
In conclusion - a potentially excellent and informative paper which I look forward to reading (and no doubt citing!) in its finished form, but in its current form we are somewhat in danger of missing the wood for the very, very numerous trees.
Having made my way through this manuscript twice, trying to follow the author's line of argument, I remain at a loss as to what s/he hopes to contribute to the extensive, wide-ranging discourse on narrative research in sociology and many other disciplines. Part of my difficulty is that I kept being distracted by the style - a rhetoric of authority (often slipping into a rhetoric of arrogance) peppered with ungrounded critical assertions, off-hand dismissals of others' efforts; and the reliance on static analytic categories - things are either 'A' or 'B', no fuzzy categories here or a sense of a dialectic where a researcher might attend both to the structural features of a life story and its situated production (as indeed many contemporary researcers do). In this regard, the long section criticizing Gubrium and Holstein's typology of qualitative research methods turns into a labored effort to force different approaches and studies into a few boxes with impermeable walls. Overall, the paper seemed like a patchwork quilt with pieces of different shapes and sizes that did not fit together well. In large part, I think this reflects the high ambitions set in the introductory paragraphs as to what the paper would accomplish: a specification of the field of narrative studies in terms of two distinct categories, a grounding of the work within the broad field of qualitative research, a critique of some subset of narrative studies (why these and no others is not clear), and recommendations for future research. The over-reliance on assertions rather than examples of actual analyses of narrative materials may be the result of trying to cover so many complex issues in one paper. The lack of empirical examples is - from my perspective - the most serious problem of the paper. This is a talky-talky paper and the discrepancy between this type of claimed analytic talk and the actual doing of the work is I think at the root of my problems with it. The image of the author that comes through for me - a reading that may be in error - is of someone who has never done a close analysis of any type of discourse or narrative account. If this is an incorrect judgement, I think s/he should find a friendly, responsive editor who can help them write in a style that more closely represents her/his competence. I am not comfortable with responding solely with a list of criticisms and I would like to end by saying that I thought the last section of the paper, i.e. the 'advocacy of research themes, would be worth developing. More has been done on these topics than s/he acknowledges but I think further exploration of these topics would be interseting and important, with the caveat that such an effort requires analyses of empirical materials.
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